MacBook Pro with Touch Bar – Day 2 – Battery and More Experiences

Day 2 with the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Don’t forget to check out yesterday’s first experiences.

So after a full day, I am still enjoying my MacBook Pro. I have found a few more instances where I am using the Touch Bar too.

So firstly the first full charge and near discharge of battery only produced 8 hours usage. Apple claim 10 hours. I can never see this being reached. To achieve my 8 hours battery life, I had bluetooth, wifi and location services left on. 4 email accounts were active using the mail app. Tweetbot for Mac was streaming in the background. For 60 mins I was streaming a TV show to the Apple TV directly from the MacBook Pro. Other activities including watching some YouTube videos and typing a few bits and pieces, as well as browsing the internet using Safari.

The enhanced colour gamut retina screen is beautiful. Anything and everything you do on it looks great. Listening to any sound is superb via the in built speakers. I have had one instance when the sound wouldn’t play through the inbuilt speakers so I had to soft reset the machine to fix the problem. Bluetooth music audio is truly excellent.

I deliberately subscribed to iTunes Match to ensure my 100gb of music sitting on my old MacBook would be available on any Apple device. This also meant I did not have to worry about transferring data using cables between the old and new devices. Nor would I need a dongle or adapter. I also paid for a higher storage limit with Apple, along with iCloud Photos. With iCloud Drive switched on, all my documents appeared on my new mac. With iCloud Photos and iTunes Match I now have all my music and photos on my new device. To get all my music stored locally as well as the iCloud, I just created a new playlist for all my music and downloaded this playlist, which would make iTunes Match to download every song to the new machine. This was completed overnight.

I have deliberately wanted to try and use all the Apple services and hardware to try and experience the Apple Eco system in full. iCloud seems to work really well, but with more usage and testing I am sure I might found some bugs.

The power and speed of the new MacBook is incredible. Go to the applications page, select all the apps, then do command O. (O is for Open). This will open every app on the MacBook. It will do this really fast.

And now to the Touch Bar. I am not going out of my way to use it all all, but it definitely improves the flow for some tasks. I haven’t found it essential yet, but like having Touch ID, it is a pleasant extra to have available. Scrubbing through YouTube videos using the Touch Bar works really smoothly. Having menu shortcuts on the Touch Bar do bring to life shortcuts that I didn’t know existed.

I haven’t really found any negatives yet. It really is a positive experience, albeit an expensive one. In time as I use it more, I will see whether I believe it represents good value for money. However, the reality is this. If you want a new MacBook Pro, either buy one or don’t. These are your only choices!